More Praise For Young Keeper

Seamus McDonagh and academy coach Rafa Gonzalez have spoken up on the official site in praise of Benjamin Siegrist after his World Cup exploits.

As we all know Benji not only helped Switzerland to their maiden FIFA trophy, the U17 World Cup, but he also bagged or is that caught the Golden Gloves award for best goalkeeper.

McDonagh has worked with the lad, and it shows how integrated our academy set up is with the first team as he admitted that Benji already works regularly with both Brad's:

'He loves working with the two Brads - Friedel and Guzan. He gets a kick out of that and he holds his own.'

McDonagh goes onto explain that Siegrist does an hour every morning and that although it's very demanding on a 17 year old in his first season, Siegrist loves every second of it and has already seen the benefits of working with the first teamers.

Gonzalez isn't surprised with the youngsters achievement either given how hard he works in training.

'We are very proud of him. Benjamin is a confident goalkeeper with good presence on the pitch.

'He looks very confident and passes confidence on to his team-mates, which is one of the most important things as a goalkeeper.'

As we learn more about the player he's clearly doing the groundwork and has a lot of talent for his age. Whilst our Academy has a good record of bringing through players goalkeepers aren't one of them at the moment.

It sounds to all intents and purposes like this chap has everything he needs to be one of the few that breaks through.